It was in this spirit that, one day during my recent visit to Paris, I escaped from the busy idleness of that gay and ever-bustling city, to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of one whose surpassing qualities of mind, and heart, and person, had endeared her to all who knew her—­whose brilliant career had been closed with awful suddenness—­and whose lamented death has left a void in the circle over which she presided with such graceful urbanity, which no other can hope to fill.  By a strange coincidence, it was precisely on that day, the year before, that she had paid me her farewell visit in London; little did either of us then foresee how and where that visit would be returned by me!  The regret of parting was then softened by our mutual conviction that many meetings were in store for us in the new home she had chosen for herself in a foreign land.  Alas! before many weeks had elapsed she was suddenly summoned to her eternal home!  In the midst of health, and hope, and enjoyment, Death insidiously laid his icy grasp upon her; but so gently was the blow dealt, that neither sigh nor struggle marked her passage from life to immortality; and before her stunned friends could bring themselves to believe that her warm heart had indeed grown cold, the vaults of the Madeleine had received all that was left on earth of the once beautiful and gifted Marguerite Blessington.

But not to remain there.  A tomb was constructed for her, far from the crowded cemeteries of the capital, in a spot which she herself would have selected, could her wishes have been consulted.  On the confines of the quiet village of Chambourey, a league beyond St. Germain-en-Laye, a green eminence, crowned with luxuriant chestnut-trees, divides the village church-yard from the grounds of the Duke de Gramont.  On that breezy height, overlooking the magnificent plain that stretches between St. Germain and Paris, a mausoleum has been erected worthy of containing the mortal remains of her whom genius and talent had delighted to honor—­

  “Whom Lawrence painted and whom Byron sung!”

A pyramid composed of large blocks of white stone, and similar in form to the ancient monuments of Egypt, rises from a platform of solid black granite, which has been completely isolated from the surrounding surface by a deep dry moat, whose precipitous slopes are clothed with softest greenest turf.  A bronze railing incloses the whole, within which has been planted a broad belt of beautiful evergreens and flowering shrubs; and beyond these the lofty chestnut trees “wave in tender gloom,” and form a leafy canopy to shelter that lonely tomb from the winds of heaven.  Solid, simple, and severe, it combines every requisite in harmony with its solemn destination; no meretricious ornaments, no false sentiment, mar the purity of its design.  The genius which devised it has succeeded in cheating the tomb of its horrors, without depriving it of its imposing gravity.  The simple portal is surmounted by a plain massive cross of stone, and a door, secured by an open work of bronze, leads into a sepulchral chamber, the key of which had been confided to me.